


The Lottery and The Feast

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Category: Runescape
Genre: Gen, Zarosian Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 14:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6333151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Excerpts from two 2nd Age letters from Azzanadra to Wahisietel. They concern the antics of the latter's brother.<br/>Written in October 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lottery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by accounts of the lotteries held by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, better known as Elagabalus or Heliogabalus.

_[…] take care that your […manuscript badly burned here] brother shall stage no more plays, publish no more poetry nor host any more lotteries._  
  
Being how slow the news travel to the border provinces, I take it that you have not heard of the last. […]in the amphitheatre of  Ingenius the Largely Forgotten […this is probably blood…] as tickets cost a mere two copper coins a piece, the event was hugely popular […]  
  
[…]appeared on stage, escorted by a group of girls gathered from East Canalside or the insulae south of Silvarea, you know the type, wearing short togas and wreaths, and himself covered entirely in gold brocade and garlands […]brought on the stage a great basket in which were the tickets, and a table laid with small wooden boxes.  
  
The gist of the thing was that as a number was drawn, the participant would get on the stage and point at a numbered box of his choice. Whatever substance or thing was in the box; with that he would be covered with from toe to crown.  
  
As the winner held  his open box and its contents in the air, a pair of Avernics would pick up an urn from the stage-side, carry it over to the stage (where the participant was being restrained by the dominae fortunae) and tipped it over o’er his head, regardless of what was inside.  
  
Some of them drew boxes filled with thin air, and with thin air the shrieking she-wolves covered them in an obscene pantomime.  
  
Others drew fairly useful things, and having suffered the indignity of being covered in bread, apples or sandals, carted their gains away quiet happy.  
  
Then there were the ones who drew booby prizes, and wound up under heaps of cow manure, dead cats, or sand.  
  
And then there were a few poor winners, whose bodies were crushed under loads of silver, gold and gemstones. Invited by their host, the audience clambered on stage and ransacked the barrow-heaps, climbing over and kicking down one another[…]city guard, when the riot broke out.  
  
[…]regardless of what became of the man who survived his way out of a pile of Kharidian dyes or the one who clambered out from a heap of live virii cubs. I don’t care.[…]only that this does not happen again.  
  
He’s out of control, and outside my jurisdiction.  
  
Reagardless […more burn, some lines missing]  
  
I remain your friend, […]  
  
From the correspondence between Legatus Wahisietel and Pontifex Maximus Azzanadra; Late Period of the Zarosian Empire; 2nd Age


	2. The Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The outrageousness that is Sliske, part N.

  
  
_As for your brother, he is as he has ever been._  
  
The money he spent on clothes over the past few months would buy a villa in Upper Silvarea, and the sum he has used on hosting decadent parties would get you the two adjacent ones.  
  
His outrageous behaviour culminated two weeks ago at a feast thrown supposedly to celebrate the summer solstice. In an unprecedented show of hospitality and bad taste, he invited to his house some fifty suddenly-rich merchants and bureaucrats, plus an entire slum’s worth of actors, dancers, degenerate poets and other fashionable gutter trash.  
  
Here is an exempt of my contact’s report on the event:  
  
A guard of servants stood at the door to hand the arrivals their first goblets of undiluted wine so that none would have to tolerate sobriety until dinner was served. Having thus been welcomed, the guests were lead to the banquet-hall and shown to their places. The humans and the vyres settled on the couches and the few Chthonians between them, but the middle of the room remained empty. Then their host, clad in small tent’s worth of purple Kharidian silk, announced that the dinner would begin.  
  
At his words, the flames in the candles died down and the room fell quiet. From the direction of the door came a few strains of flute music, and the sound of something heavy moving.  
  
Then, all at once, the lights came on in a blinding explosion of colours, and into the room twirled and cartwheeled a procession of dancers and musicians, some carrying bowls of wine, followed by six Byzroth carrying a large, low table on which the food was arrayed. The human food, exotic fruit and expensively spiced dishes, was on serving plates around the edges. In the middle was food for the vyres and Chthonians. For them, he had emptied from the Praetorians’ cells all the more famous or exotic prisoners, some of whom I recognized. Humans, low-ranking vyres, and as a centrepiece two icyene captured at the Hallowland border. They had all been bathed and perfumed, coiffed and painted and dressed in festive clothes. A spell restrained their movements, forcing some to recline while others knelt with plates of nuts or cakes in their hands.  
  
Over the noise of music, applause and shrieking, the host invited his guests to all help themselves. They did.  
As for my source’s account of the general drunkenness and debauchery that went on, it is too sordid to reproduce here. He mentions a few more disturbing incidents, though.  
  
At some point, S. seized a servant who had stepped on the hem of his voluminous robes, and bodily handed the man to a nearby vyre. An hour or so later, he quite intentionally tipped a crater of red wine over his clothes and laughed it off in delight.  
  
A while later, I overheard him conversing with a woman who was accompanying one of the merchants. She praised the food, saying she had never had such delicacies. Chewing on a meat pastry, she asked what was in it, as she hadn't tasted anything like it before. The host answered that the pies got their piquant taste from the satirist Aegidios. When she asked how that was possible, he told her that Aegidios was what was in the pies. It would have been remiss of him, he said, to not feed all his guests equally well.  
  
At this point my contact briefly abandoned his mission to get out of the room and retch. He was standing at the front door, trying to catch his breath, when from the banquet-hall came a terrible commotion. The terrified guests were all rushing out, chased by their host, who was screaming obscenities and accusing them –quite justly –of being a load of drunkards and parasites and vermin.  
He punctuated his words with fire and managed to set at least one of the humans alight. By now a patrol had shown up, and he was screaming at them to arrest his guests. Amid a lot of confusion, they took the names of the respectable citizens and rounded up the infames for a night in the cells.  
  
Then, my source’s report concludes, he headed back indoors, and every light in the house went off at once.  
Now Trindine is coming to me with complaints, saying that the Praefectus has abandoned all semblance of minding his duties, and that the entire running of the Praetorian organisation has fallen on her shoulders. Ever since of that night, she says, all he does is sit in the dungeon in his old Freneskae robes, brooding, mute, refusing to even torture prisoners.


End file.
